Wood killed her, says Caroline's soulmate

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Seeking excess . . . Caroline Byrne with Gordon Wood after she left her dependable sweetheart, policeman Andrew Blanchette, who stumbled on her body in the morgue. Photo: Narelle Cook

The Director of Public Prosecutions yesterday ordered police to conduct further investigations into the death of the Sydney model Caroline Byrne before he decides if Gordon Wood should be charged with murder. Robert Wainwright investigates.

Rarely a day goes by without Andrew Blanchette reflecting on the winter morning he came face to face with the man he believes murdered his childhood sweetheart.

It was June 7, 1995, and the then police constable had begun his day by attending the Glebe Morgue on Parramatta Road. As the 27-year-old Blanchette stood in the chilly room waiting for his partner, he flipped idly through the morgue logbook - a diary which allocates a page to each body brought in: name, details, cause of death, description of injuries etc.

He stopped suddenly, unable to believe the words on the page in front of him - "Jane Doe, possibly Caroline Byrne," it read. The details were sketchy. "Jumped off The Gap; believed to be suicide."

Blanchette almost collapsed. It couldn't be right, or at least not the Caroline Byrne he knew. After all, it was such a common name. And suicide? Absolutely no way.

Andrew Blanchette and Caroline Byrne had virtually grown up together from the age of 14, first as neighbours in Camden and then as school friends, sweethearts and finally lovers as they grew into adulthood when the shy but striking young woman went into modelling and he into the police force.

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The relationship had ended, amicably, three years earlier but they had still kept in touch. He had seen her only three days before, unhappy about her relationship with Gordon Wood, the man who won her heart because, she told Andrew, Gordon was his opposite.

Rather than his dependability she was after excitement and excess, and that's what Wood, chauffeur to the businessman Rene Rivkin, had to offer.

Blanchette phoned the Byrne family - Tony, Caroline's father, and brother Peter - in a panic. He spoke to a morgue attendant who told him that Wood had already been in to identify the body. Andrew left in a daze and drove to the City Gym to see a friend, another police officer.

As they stood on the footpath, a white soft-topped Suzuki Vitara 4WD drove past, and slowed. Gordon Wood, dressed in a suede jacket, was at the wheel. He pointed to Andrew Blanchette then stopped.

Wood told him the news: "Caroline's dead. She was hit by a car in the Cross last night," he blurted.

Blanchette's grief was instantly replaced by rage: "That's bullshit. Why would you tell me that? She was found at The Gap."

Wood was taken aback: "Oh, oh, oh . . . well it was suicide, like her mother. She jumped."

"No she didn't," Blanchette retorted. "Caroline would never do that, and I'm going to find out what really happened." Gordon Wood left in a hurry.

Andrew Blanchette clenched and unclenched his fists, amazed that he had the control not to strangle the man he believes threw Caroline Byrne from The Gap in the early hours of the morning.

Almost nine years later, Blanchette still believes Caroline was murdered and that Wood was almost certainly responsible.

He also fears that a botched police investigation may allow Wood to remain free, wandering the world since a coronial inquest returned an open verdict in 1998.

Blanchette spoke out this week as police were ordered by the Director of Public Prosecutions, Nicholas Cowdery, QC, to continue investigations.

"I am still very angry about the whole thing," he told the Herald. "The police investigation was botched from the very beginning. Resources were a problem but the investigation itself was handled very badly. Even now I don't feel I have been able to have my say properly.

"Caroline would never have committed suicide as Gordon Wood claims, and definitely would not have done something to smash her face.

"I knew her better than anyone outside her family. We spent 10 years together. She wouldn't let you rub your hands over her face. She went to bed with conditioner in her hair. It is unthinkable that she would do something to scar herself.

"In my 13 years as a police officer every suicide jumped feet first, not head first. If she had run and leapt from The Gap she wouldn't have landed on her head."

Byrne's body was found just over nine metres from the base of The Gap. Physicists from the University of Sydney conducted tests for police, using a mannequin, and concluded that she was probably thrown, most likely by two men .

"Anyway," said Blanchette, "she was flat-footed. She could not have jumped and ended up where she did. Caroline was thrown; she was murdered."